I went on a routine assignment today for Central Baptist Hospital. I was doing an environmental portrait of a Jessamine County farmer named Ray Waits, a patient that they are featuring in the upcoming issue of their magazine Care Central. When I arrived at his farm I figured out from the aroma in the air that this wasn’t going to be routine. I smelled something that immediately flooded my mind with memories that took me back to my childhood. I smelled wood burning in a pot belly stove, coming from a small room on the side of a barn, and along with it I could smell the scent of a tobacco. Although I never had the pleasure of working in tobacco very much as a kid, I did spend a lot of time hanging out in my grandfather’s stripping room watching my parents work in it along side my aunts and uncles. My job was to always pick up the leaves that fell on the floor. My uncle used to tell me that that was a very important job!!!

Ray Waits had as much character as his tobacco barn did. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of him, in surroundings that once was Kentucky’s mainstay and is now almost forgotten.